Part 2 – 2 Node VSAN 6.6.1 Lab

As with any other vSphere setup, i am using VMware Workstation to run my entire VSAN Lab. I have installed VCSA 6.5 on my workstation as an appliance and have three ESXi 6.5 hosts installed as workstation VMs. I have connected two ESXi hosts directly using the LAN Segment to mimic the setup of 2 Node VSAN cluster. Also i i have added additional NICS as needed to enable vMotion and configuring redundancy for Management Network. Any configuration works as long as there is proper connectivity and VMkernel interfaces are enabled with VSAN Traffic.

As discussed earlier, the Witness Host cannot be part of same VSAN cluster and canno tbe part of another Stretched or 2 Node VSAN cluster. Special configurations are supported by VMware with RPQ and you may need to get in touch with support for further details.

Add the ESXi hosts to vCenter and configure networking as below and ensure there are VMkernel interfaces enabled with VSAN Traffic on each host. Since we are doing a 2 Node Direct Connect setup, configure the vmkernel interfaces with different subnet. In my case i am using 172.10.10.0 network.

lab 2

lab 3

Hope this was informative. Thanks!

Part 1 – 2 Node VSAN 6.6.1

Part 2 – 2 Node VSAN 6.6.1 Lab

Part 3 – 2 Node VSAN Witness Installation

Part 4 – 2 Node VSAN Network Validation

Part 5 – 2 Node VSAN Configuration

Hal Buruto 9:28 PM on October 19, 2017

For your lab, what disks did you use for your VSAN running inside VMware workstation?

thanks.
- vmmasterblog 9:45 PM on October 19, 2017
  
  Hi Hal, I am using SSD drive on my laptop. If you don’t have SSDs you can still use HDD and mark them as flash in the web client.
  - Hal Buruto 1:11 AM on October 20, 2017
    
    thanks! very helpful step by step instructions
    - vmmasterblog 1:54 PM on October 20, 2017
      
      Thank You!
Anonymous 10:34 AM on September 30, 2019

Hello VMMaster,
May I ask how did you connect the two ESXi host directly using the LAN segment to mimic the setup of two direct node vsan cluster?
James 10:51 AM on September 30, 2019

Hello VMMaster,
May I ask how did you connect the two ESXi host directly using the LAN segment to mimic the setup of two direct node vsan cluster?
- vmmasterblog 11:55 AM on September 30, 2019
  
  Hi James,
  Add a nic on each ESXi vm, and connect them to a new lan segment (not the one used for MGMT traffic)on the workstation. Hope that helps.
Anonymous 1:18 AM on October 1, 2019

Hi VMMaster,

From my vmware workstation. Each host has 6 vmnic and I assigned them according to the following configuration.

ESX01
vSwitch0 – vmnic0,vmnic1 (bridge connection)
vProduction0 – vmnic2,vmnic3 (bridge connection)
vSwitch1 – vmnic4,vmnic5((bridge connection)

Port Group Device IP Address
Management Network – vmk0 – 192.168.1.102
vSAN_Traffic – vmk1 – 192.168.243.102
vMotion – vmk2 – 192.168.240.102

ESX02
vSwitch0 – vmnic0,vmnic1 (bridge connection)
vProduction0 – vmnic2,vmnic3 (bridge connection)
vSwitch1 – vmnic4,vmnic5((bridge connection)

Port Group Device IP Address
Management Network – vmk0 – 192.168.1.103
vSAN_Traffic – vmk1 – 192.168.243.103
vMotion – vmk2 – 192.168.240.103

ESXWitness
Port Group Device IP Address
Management Network – vmk0 – 192.168.1.105
witnessPg – vmk1 – 192.168.1.179

I’m not sure how can I connect directly the two esxi host to mimic the 2 node direct cluster.
From the ESX01, I’m not be able to ping the witness.

The ESXi Shell can be disabled by an administrative user. See the
vSphere Security documentation for more information.
[root@jd-esxvsn01:~] vmkping -I vmk1 192.168.1.105
PING 192.168.1.105 (192.168.1.105): 56 data bytes
sendto() failed (Network is unreachable)
[root@jd-esxvsn01:~] vmkping -I vmk1 192.168.1.106
PING 192.168.1.106 (192.168.1.106): 56 data bytes
sendto() failed (Network is unreachable)
[root@jd-esxvsn01:~]

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30